How Assassin's Creed III Re-created the Revolutionary War

The third installment of the hugely popular Assassin's Creed franchise takes players back to the 1700s. Here's how game creator Ubisoft replicated the guns, uniforms, and everyday life of Revolutionary times as accurately as possible.

How Assassin's Creed III Re-created the Revolutionary War

How Assassin's Creed III Re-created the Revolutionary War

The Assassin's Creed franchise is known for some of the tightest melee combat in video games. It's also known for historical accuracy, and the third installment is no exception.

Assassin's Creed III unfolds between about 1753 and 1783, during several pivotal moments leading up to and including the Revolutionary War. You'll experience the chaos of the Boston Tea Party and become cannon fodder during the Battle of Bunker Hill.

The game, which comes out this October, is not just using the American Revolution as a set piece for blood and gore. Ubisoft's goal was to put you on the battlefield and re-create the war with more historical accuracy than you might expect. How will the developers accomplish this?

Cannons and Muskets

Cannons and Muskets

ACIII is not intended as a shooter, though there is violence and frequent hand-to-hand combat. Yet players will find themselves amid artillery and musket fire. To re-create historic battles, the developers made sure the muskets were fairly inaccurate and could not shoot more than about 50 yards in a battle. Cannons can be re-positioned in the game, but only up and down, not side to side, since many Revolutionary cannons were placed on wagons. (Even those not on wagons were hard to move from side to side.)

"Soldiers were often afraid that a musket would explode in their own face," says Maxime Durand, a Ubisoft employee who served as the full-time historian for ACIII. "The accuracy of the weapons forced them to get in line. This also forced them to stay in a group and obey the commanding officer."

Durand says the game reflects the firearm limitations of the times: Soldiers can fire a shot once every 30 seconds, as it takes that long for them to clean the barrel, rearm, ram the ammo, and fire. Interestingly, this opens up a new game-play element that the developers lovingly call a "meat shield": grabbing a slow infantryman and using him as a human shield.

Musket inaccuracy also lets players sneak around in trademark Assassin's Creed fashion. The main character, a colonist named Connor Kenway who is under the control of the AC time-traveling protagonist Desmond Miles, can do this in several battle scenes, including the Battle of Bunker Hill. Thank military etiquette of the 18th century, when the British especially considered random skirmishes to be barbaric and wholly unethical. "Even the Americans aspired to the military order and discipline inherent in volley firing," Forman says.